Seven Nation Army

The riff enters like a declaration — a low, reverberating guitar line that works through an octave pedal so it rumbles like a bass but bites like a string, one of the most recognizable openings in twenty-first century rock. Meg White's drumming is deliberate and unhurried, giving the song a processional weight that matches the lyric's imagery of being hunted, pursued by unnamed institutional forces. Jack White strips production to its absolute minimum — two people, a few instruments, a large room — and in that minimalism creates something that sounds enormous, the negative space between drum hits amplifying the tension. The song has a blues architecture underneath the post-punk surface, that cyclical descent and release that borrows from field hollers and chain gang rhythms. It became a stadium chant almost immediately, which is strange for something so spare, but the riff's momentum is unstoppable once it takes hold. This is the song playing when you've decided to push back against something larger than yourself, when defiance has crystallized into calm determination.